NAME Blinded By the Light - Sunday Service for August 2nd, 2020.mp3 DATE August 4, 2020 DURATION 23m 17s START OF TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] The following is a message from Wellspring's congregation. [00:00:04] Hi, everybody. It's good to be with you again today, and I hope that this message, the service this morning finds you're doing well, like I think actually millions, maybe tens of millions of people. [00:00:17] Early on in the month of July, I ordered for the first time Disney plus. And I did it for one specific reason, and that was to see the filmed version of the stage play Hamilton. Now, as it turns out, I came for Hamilton and stayed for Pixar, but that's a separate conversation for another time. I haven't seen Hamilton live and seen on Broadway or touring. And my wife and I a couple of years ago, we decided, you know, did something we do on a regular basis. Once a year, we go up to New York City, stay overnight, see friends, get some food. New York is where I'm from. It's always nice to get back there. And we decided that we also we feel ready to spend a ludicrous amount of money on a Broadway play. And there were two choices. One was Hamilton and the other was excuse me, Springsteen on Broadway. And our reasoning went like this. Hamilton will probably be here for a very long time. There will be a touring version. It can be played by all kinds of actors and actresses, whereas Springsteen on Broadway is just Springsteen. On Broadway, there is no replacement. There is no other person to play Bruce Springsteen. And so we went to see Springsteen on Broadway and we never looked back with any regrets whatsoever. [00:01:31] It was entirely worth the money and the investment. It was one of my most favorite place I've ever seen and I have seen a lot of plays in my life. Some of you know that Springsteen on Broadway is Bruce kind of telling his life story in words and even more because he's Bruce Springsteen in music. And one of the things he does is he will play some of his songs and he'll intersperse stories throughout. And so he opens Springsteen on Broadway with one of his first songs that kind of started to make him famous. It's called Growing Up. It's from his first major studio album, recording Greetings from Asbury Park. And he does about the first couple verses and chorus. And then he goes into more of a spoken word piece. And I'm going to read that to you right now. Except the thing is this Springsteen on Broadway, he actually curses a lot more in that in that show that he does on a lot of his records. And and if you've been around Wellspring's for a while, you know, I don't you know, I'm not averse at all to to a good curse word. [00:02:33] However, something feels a little bit different now that I'm kind of coming into your homes. I recognize I have dialed way, way back on the cursing and some of you might miss it. And some of you are grateful for that. So, you know, that's your experience, not mine. You do what you want with it. So I'm going to read this to you. And throughout this message, there are a few things where there are some curse words and I'll just kind of bleep those out or pick a different word. So Bruce starts to say, now, everybody, everybody has a love hate relationship with their hometown. It's just built into the equation of growing up. If you take me, I'm Mr. Born to Run. I'm Mr. Thunder F-in' Road. I was born to run, not to stay in my home. New Jersey. It's a death trap. It's a suicide rap. I had to get out. I got to hit the highway. I'm a road runner, man. I got the white line fever in my brain. I'm going to bring my girl and I've had enough of the stuff this place dishes out. I'm going to run, run, run. And, well, I'm never coming back. [00:03:36] And Bruce pauses, I currently live 10 minutes from my hometown and then he concludes, but born to come back, who would have bought that stuff? [00:03:54] It's a great way that he begins the story of Springsteen on Broadway, because it's about this tension all throughout his life. He's in his 70s now and he's doing a lot of reflecting on who he's been and who he was and the stories that he's told and who he wants to be in the later stages of his life, kind of gathering up the pieces of himself and that tension between going out and coming back. [00:04:20] What it is to leave home and what it is to return home changed with maybe a different deeper appreciation and different eyes for seeing home. [00:04:35] Today's Spiritflix message, the series we do in the summer about the stories that we watch on our screens and the wisdom within those stories. It is a Bruce Springsteen story. It's named for one of those songs, Blinded by the Light on that first album of his, except it's set far away from Asbury Park, New Jersey, or even from the United States. It's based on a true story. It's based on a memoir by a writer named Sarfraz Manzoor. Now, he grew up in a small town, depressed town, a struggling working class town as a first generation son of immigrants from Pakistan. Now, this is a story that's been changed, even his name was changed, the main character in Blinded by the Light is a young man named Javaeed. Javeed is 17 years old. And like a lot of 17 year olds, he has no idea where he belongs in the world. He's an aspiring writer, but his parents were economically terribly struggling. His father has just lost a job in his factory, the job that barely kept them in kind of the middle class. He's lost his job and his mom has to take on extra, extra, extra work, sewing and repairing garments. And they're barely holding on. And David has this vision of himself as a writer, as an artist. [00:05:58] And he is also. [00:06:01] An immigrant to a country that lets him know in many ways he is not welcome there. This is set in 1987, this story, and this is when some of, you know, authoritarian movements, the big one, what we would call maybe they're alt, right. The you know, the you will not replace us. Jews will not replace us crudely ugliness we've seen, especially in the last few years, in a heightened way in this country. Well, that was called the National Front in 1987. And it was viciously racist and anti-immigrant. And to be Pakistani in this time, especially in a place an hour from London, was to be a vulnerable person. And so Javeed really feels this tension between the family that he feels he's pulling away from and the wider world that because of who he is, because of his identity, because of his race, his nationality, his ethnicity and his religion as a Muslim. [00:06:56] Whether he belongs in that wider English society as well. [00:07:02] Now, one of his fellow South Asian students who is not even that close with when the movie begins, he kind of runs into him in the hall and they bump into each other and out of this guy's Walkman. Remember, it's nineteen eighty seven out of this guy's Walkman pops a Bruce Springsteen cassette. And eventually Javeed starts to ask, who's the guy? And his friend says, Bruce is the direct mind to all that is true in this blanking world. And David, here's Bruce Springsteen, and he feels that for the first time, someone has understood his story, the economic struggles and the struggles to fit in, even with their very different identities and nationalities. In the midst of this life in which he has all these tensions and pressures and the threat of violence and the threat of harassment because of the racism that surrounds him and the tension with his family who want him to be one thing, something respectable, like a doctor or lawyer, to go to university to become that. [00:08:07] But no, he really wants to be a writer. [00:08:12] This is a coming of age story, it's a totally unsubtle movement, essentially unsubtle movie as one of the reasons I love it. I mean, Bruce has some subtle songs, but as someone who has seen him in concert, I don't know, 15, 16, 17, 18 times, I lost count. By now, Bruce is not beloved for his subtlety. He's beloved how big an open and inclusive his heart is and how even in the in a stadium of 70000 people, he can make it feel intimate.